Devon County Council leader John Hart writes for this title

Exmouth Journal: Council leader Councillor John Hart says this is Devon's 'best budget in a decade'. Picture: contributedCouncil leader Councillor John Hart says this is Devon's 'best budget in a decade'. Picture: contributed (Image: John Hart.)

Just before Christmas, I explained how Devon County Council would be using the £2 million we’d secured from the Government to combat holiday hunger in children.

County council officers had just two weeks to set up a scheme from scratch to ensure children in Devon didn’t go hungry over the Christmas holidays.

The scheme we set up provided vouchers for those Devon families who were entitled to free school meals during term time.

Each voucher was worth £15 a week for each child and could be redeemed in a variety of supermarkets with alternative arrangements for those people who could not easily get to a supermarket.

The feedback we’ve had from that scheme has been generally very positive and more supermarkets have signed up since Christmas so we are now planning to do something similar for the half-term and Easter holidays.

But we’re making some changes so it’s even easier for people to access whilst recognising that all of Devon is in lockdown.

Because of the massive time constraints last time, schools did not have much involvement and many told us they would like to do more to help their children and families.

During term-time, schools have the responsibility to administer free school meals even if the majority of their pupils are learning from home.

So we’ve involved our schools with this process for half-term to make sure it’s easy for families to understand how they can receive their vouchers.

And here I would pay tribute to headteachers and their staff for their sterling efforts over this past year in doing their very best for our children .

It's worth remembering why this scheme is so important. The statistics are stark. We have around 93,000 pupils in Devon’s 369 schools.

At the start of 2020, some 12,680 were eligible for free school meals. By autumn that had risen to 14,773 as the effects of the pandemic took hold on our economy and affected the household incomes of so many families.

Even more dramatically, the number of requests to register for free school meals rose threefold on the previous year.

So I am proud that we have been able to invest £1 million over Christmas and another £1 million now on combating holiday hunger for children.

But it is not only school-age children we have been helping. Eligible children in pre-school and young people in sixth form colleges also received support at Christmas and we will be repeating that with the new scheme.

There was some criticism of the scheme at Christmas that we did not give local shops and organisations enough opportunity to take part. We said we would extend the scheme to include them but the latest lockdown has made that very difficult.

So we are working with the Devon Community Foundation which has close links with foodbanks, community kitchens, holiday clubs, local businesses and charities to try to expand the scheme.

We are conscious that people are losing their jobs all the time and their families may not be eligible for free school meals but we obviously still want their children to benefit. So we would urge anyone who feels they may now be eligible for free schools meals to apply directly to the county council.

We’re also working with local council partners in Team Devon to ensure such vulnerable families do not slip through the net.

We have seen an overwhelming response to the pandemic from local communities across Devon as well as voluntary and community organisations and I know our investment will only enhance those endeavours.

More information is available on the Devon County Council website.